This is an adaptation of an 1956 Argentine novel and won plenty of plaudits from critics. The novel is apparently rather important in Argentine literature but I haven’t read it and I believe this film makes some assumptions that make it difficult to understand for those who have no knowledge of the book. For example, I had no idea that the events depicted take place in Paraguay. Add to that the usual dose of surrealism that you often see in South American literature and you get a film that takes some effort to make sense of.

Don Diego de Zama is a magistrate of the Spanish Crown who is assigned to a remote corner of the empire. He has a wife and apparently children somewhere far away but has not seen them for years. In fact, the bureaucracy seems to have forgotten about him as he has not received any pay for a long time. Nevertheless he is still acknowledged as the magistrate by the locals and does what he can even as he petitions the governor to write a letter to the Spanish King to have him transferred away. Meanwhile the people blame all manner of local problems and crimes on a bandit named Vicuña Porto. Rumor spread of the legendary bandit being caught and executed, some of these rumors even involve Zama performing the deed and one governor sports a dried ear said to cut off of the bandit, yet he always crops up again. As Zama waits seemingly forever for his longed for transfer, a succession of governors come and go and his living conditions deteriorate until he is barely living as better than the local Indians.

There’s very little exposition here so you’re left to grasp for whatever clues you can glean from the context. Arguably the full details don’t really matter as it is Zama’s state of mind that matters as he becomes increasingly isolated and bereft of hope. Still some clarity on Zama’s background would have been very helpful. One scene for example has Zama hearing a petition from some settlers who seem to want some Indian slaves. Zama reacts violently when his assistant suggests that the settlers might not even be truly Spanish. His reaction seems somewhat over the top and made sense only when I later read that he himself is an Americano, a citizen of the empire who was born in the Americas and not Spain itself. It seems that this is key to his resentment and suspicion that he is being sidelined in favor of those who are properly Spanish. Then there are the mystical elements which I still can’t make sense of, such as possible sightings of ghosts and a group of five hundred blind Indians moving at night. Such scenes foster a sense of otherworldliness but also add to the confusion.

That said, this film does indeed offer a rich set of themes and emotions. There’s nothing subtle at all as we see Zama’s lot in life sink ever lower. For all their pride in the glory of the Spanish crown, the writ of civilization doesn’t run far at all and in Zama’s perception, this makes the colony he is stranded in a kind of hellhole. Yet as the film itself makes clear, at least to the native Indians of the land, it is a beautiful paradise. Zama’s emasculation extends even to sexuality. It’s clear that having sexual relations with the native girls feels degrading to him to some extent, yet that is all that is available to him and so he takes it and even so it’s clear that even they don’t respect him much. He greatly desires the Spanish wife of another government functionally and she leads him on in exchange for favors, yet that too comes to nothing. At the end, his spirit utterly crushed, Zama seems barely alive at all.

In my mind there’s no doubt that this is an excellent film but it relies heavily on cultural references and contextual cues that I don’t have access to. As such I can connect with it only on the most superficial layer and working through it is still a chore. This isn’t something that’ll ever make it to my list of favorites but I do admire what it does.